East Coast - West Coast Rivals

At 10am this morning I got a call from one of my temp agencies saying they needed someone to do some "legal admin work." To those not in the legal industry, all the non-lawyer jobs probably sound interchangeable, but they're not. A receptionist is not capable of doing a paralegal's job, and a paralegal would be highly insulted to be asked to do a receptionist's job. In New York, there are legal secretaries who work for judges, but there's also a job called "judge's secretary" and those people are required to be lawyers. Confusing, I know.

You can understand now why I asked the agency guy for clarification. I am a rockstar in certain aspects of my job, but most definitely not in others, and I didn't want to set myself up to fail by arriving at a firm and not being able to do what they needed. Somewhat luckily, this particular firm just needed a receptionist (which I haven't done in over a decade, but the real key is not to freak out when ten lines ring at once, and to not drop any calls), so off I went to the Financial District.

I asked the agency guy what the hourly rate would be. He asked what my minimum was that I'll accept. Screw that. So I told him that when his co-worker Tony sends me on jobs my usual pay rate is blah. We'll see what happens - hopefully I'll get more than unemployment pays.

This was an East Coast-based firm. Having now worked on both coasts I can tell you with certainty that West Coast-based firms are better. East Coast firms require more formal dress. No business casual for them, except maybe on Fridays. They're more likely to block websites. Quite frankly, overall the people are less friendly. I will lost all my New York street cred for saying this, but it really doesn't take any extra time to smile and say hello. (All the Southern states just started jumping up and down and waving to me.)

I hand-wrote this blog post while at the job today, around noon. At that point six people had walked by the front desk where I was sitting. One person stood at "my" desk looking over a package that was over-nighted to her and then tried to hand me an empty UPS box to throw away. Another asked if there was a pad of paper at the desk, but didn't greet me or introduce herself. The next three completely ignored me, not even making eye contact. The sixth actually introduced herself.

By the way, I was sitting at the desk of a woman who has been at this firm well over a decade. I can tell, because there is a three-foot lace doily laid across the desk, with various trinkets on it that involve teddy bears and angels. Not to mention the jar (the cover of which has a 3-D farm on it) of obligatory old lady candy.

By the end of the day the most shocking thing to happen was when the guy training me won the award for Least Politically Correct Person In San Francisco. First, he referred to the lawyer who handles immigration law as "the Korean." Then, he told me the receptionist was useless. I was so shocked that I said, "What?!" and he clarified that she has cerebral palsy and her right arm is completely useless. Oh. My.

The thing that struck me as especially weird is that you want to think that someone who would say such things is mean. Like grumpy and cruel all the time or whatever. But this guy was very nice to me (of course I'm white, like he was, and am not handicapped). People are so strange.